LEGO Elves 41071 Aira’s Creative Workshop [Review]

The LEGO Elves sets are out in the wild! I spotted some this evening at Toys R Us, and picked up a few. Happy birthday to me.

The first set up for review is 41701 Aira’s Creative Workshop. This set is $9.99 and has 98 pieces. It will be available on the LEGO Shop online on March 1.

Let’s get started!

First thing’s first: I like the Friend’s line, and am a big fan of the Disney Princess sets. So the fact that the Elves theme is part of the Friend’s line doesn’t bother me a bit.

This is a small set. The parts are in three separate baggies, and the pieces are mostly brown, tan, and purple. When it comes to Aira–I like her. The design on her torso is nice, and the elvish filagree is nice. My main issue with her is that the printing of the ears on her hairpiece does not match the color of her flesh. The hair has a nice effect of being mostly purple and fading to white tips.

The little bird’s pretty cute, too.

I am happy to report that the tiles in this set are all printed! You’ve got a ruler, the map, the scroll, and the wing design. The printing is all crisp.

The first model in the build is a desk, with ink, scissors, and a ruler. I found it to be rather clever; instead of sticking with the molded drawers, this set builds the drawer from scratch. I like that element of design.

The second piece is a glorified bird stand with a place for an envelope and a cookie. It looks nice.

The third piece is a steampunk-esque glider that Aira holds on to. There appears to be a pin to wind up the gold wings, then off she goes.

It’s a simple set overall, with decent parts. At $10, you could really take it or leave it. I enjoyed it as a nice little build. I’d say go ahead and pick one up.

Post navigation

1 comment on “LEGO Elves 41071 Aira’s Creative Workshop [Review]”

Good review! I really like this set, although when I first saw pictures of it, I thought the drawers opened separately (and even came up with a possible way that might be done, which I plan to use in MOCs)! So I was a bit surprised when I saw that it was just one drawer with two handles. Still, I guess that’s necessary since the inkwell is much larger than anything you could fit in two individual drawers that size.

The Elves characters look magnificent, and I think they look a lot better as mini-dolls than they would as minifigures. As mini-dolls, their outfits have more detail and dimension, their eyes appear more colorful and soulful, and their faces feel more complete. Flat printing with yellow skin and black dots for eyes would not be anywhere near as appealing to me, let alone to girls who wish to identify with these characters on a very personal level.

And obviously, mini-dolls better resemble the human characters used in the LEGO Elves media, which I think is nice. If the mini-doll existed back when LEGO Exo-Force (which also featured human characters) came out, I’d have loved for that theme to use them as well! If you’re already going to go with a visual language that is incompatible with the black bead eyes of regular minifigure faces, you might as well go all the way with it.

The glider in this set is clever and helps establish Aira’s personality, as does her little design desk. The window is probably one of this theme’s least impressive structures, but it fits the theme’s design language with its peaked window and roof.

Pluma the bird also looks good. Having the eyes on a white base makes up for the lack of printed whites which I felt was a big limitation for the Flame Yellowish Orange and Bright Yellowish Green variants from LEGO Friends (though the Medium Azur macaw variant was fine, since it had white printing around the eyes).

The body art on both Aira and Pluma does a lot to add to their otherworldly beauty. As does Aira’s two-tone hair! I did not realize that any of the elves but Azari had two-tone hair before seeing reviews, though I suspected Naida might based on the character art. I wish they could have advertised that feature better on the packages!